“For further proof, I cannot pass by that my Lord told His late Majesty King Charles the First, and Her Majesty the now Queen-Mother, some time before the Wars, That he observed by the humours of the People, the approaching of a Civil War, and that His Majesties Person would be in danger of being deposed, if timely care was not taken to prevent it.”
Perhaps a very far-reaching gift of prophecy may not have been necessary to foretell all this. Early in 1640, things were looking very threatening. Both in England and in Scotland political as well as religious disputes were causing frictions likely at any moment to produce a flame. Charles was preparing for a war against the Scots, and, in order to obtain a vote of supplies for this war, he summoned a Parliament, afterwards known as the Short Parliament.
When it had assembled, a letter from the Scots to the King of France, appealing for his assistance in a war which they were contemplating against the English, was produced in the House to stimulate the loyalty of the Commons. It had little effect. Members boldly asserted that a Scottish invasion might be a bad thing, but that invasions by the Crown upon the liberties of Englishmen at home were worse things still and that these home invasions ought to be repelled before the Scottish invasion. As to either subsidies for the proposed campaign against the Scots, or ship-money, the Commons passed a Resolution that “till the liberties of the House and kingdom were cleared, they knew not whether they had anything to give or no”. Pym urged peace with the Scots, while Sir Henry Vane asked for £840,000 to make war upon them. The Commons, and even the Lords, were in a sulky humour, the King was now being publicly defied by his Government and he dissolved Parliament on 5 May, 1640.
Charles, Strafford and Vane tried every possible means of raising funds for the war. The citizens of London refused to make a loan at 8 per cent. and they also refused to levy a rate. An appeal to the King of Spain for a loan met with no better success. There were revolutionary risings in London. Torture was used for the last time in England upon one of the leaders[35] of the malcontents. Presently the bishops were persuaded to give a few thousands; Cottington managed to borrow £50,000 from the East India Company at the usurious interest of 16 per cent., and at last the City agreed to a loan of £200,000, on the security of the Peers. Of all the Peers none was more ready to help the King financially than Newcastle.
[35] Gardiner’s History, vol. IX, p. 141.
The position of Newcastle’s great friend, Strafford, at this time, was intolerable. He was practically at the head of the King’s affairs; but those affairs were in an almost hopeless condition. There was not enough money to pay and provide for the army during a prolonged war; there was a mutinous spirit among the soldiers; their commander-in-chief, Northumberland, had no heart for the war; the high officials were trembling at the responsibility of illegal action; both the King and Strafford were in agony, the one from vacillation, the other from gout.
Conway, who was in command in the North and had been incredulous about a Scottish invasion, on discovering its reality wrote a very doleful letter early in August to Northumberland. He complained that he had only half the number of troops with which the Scots were about to cross the border and that nearly a quarter of his men were entirely unarmed. On learning the state of things in the North, Charles issued orders to all the lords-lieutenants in the Midlands and the North to call out the trained bands for immediate service, and, Northumberland’s health having broken down, Charles made Strafford Commander-in-Chief of the English army. The failure of Conway, of Northumberland, and eventually of Strafford, cleared the way for the employment of a man exceedingly unambitious of military service, namely, Newcastle.
The King left London for the North on 20 August, 1640. On the night of the same day, the Scottish army, of about 25,000 men, crossed the Tweed at Coldstream and invaded England. Charles reached York on the 23rd, Strafford joined him there four days later, and, on the 29th, the Scots took the city of Newcastle and occupied it. Before long the counties of Northumberland and Durham were completely in their power. Charles held a great council of the peers at York; he announced that he was about to issue writs for a Parliament to meet on 3 November, and he asked the advice of the council upon the situation. The upshot of much deliberation on the part of the council, and much negotiation with the enemy, was that a cessation of arms was agreed upon, the two northern counties being left in the possession of the Scots.
The Parliament—the notorious Long Parliament—met on the day appointed. Within ten days, Strafford, who had taken his seat in the Lords, was impeached and arrested. About a month later, Laud had also been impeached and, like Strafford, imprisoned in the Tower.